Incorporating video into Google Mobile Street View

Abstract

Mobile Street View is a compelling application but suffers from significant latency problems, especially in limited bandwidth circumstances. Currently, the application uses static images to display street level information. Utilizing video in addition to images has the potential to improve the Street View user experience. In this paper, we examine the design and performance of mobile Street View and consider how to use video to reduce user visible latency. Video also allows for alternate navigation methods which could improve the application's ease of use. We created a prototype on Android to examine the plausibility of incorporating video into mobile Street View. Comparing the performance of our video prototype to the traditional step-by-step Street View approach, we found a 4x increase in the speed of viewing an entire street. For the video prototype I also found significant improvement in both user visible latencies and useful screen time. Additionally, I found that the time to fetch video chunks was less than the time to display them.